Nestling the turtledove.

May my heart rejoice in Your love, O Lord.

Let me live each day anew.

Oh deliver not the soul of Thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of Thy poor forever. Psalm 74:19

The Kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Come Lord, and open in us the gates of Your Kingdom.

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12

Lord, in our efforts to serve, help us to be true to who we are in You. Make us see and understand the gifts and talents You have given us, and give us courage to use them for the building up of Your kingdom. Amen.

So we all have different ideas of fun.

And yesterday, after a quite long day at the Arizona History Museum and their not-quite-ready-for –prime-time program for 66 fourth graders but one of the dads was a wonderful help in an experienced soccer coach sort of way, and after making a couple phone calls home to Spanish-only parents about their child’s off task classroom behavior, and after a quite blustery playground duty, and yet again another thirty-minute online course on how to administer the AZ Merit test and yes, I got 100% on the post quiz, and after a pretty long meeting at the Thomas E. Lee Instructional Resources Center detailing that TUSD only pays for non-covered airport parking and that we were all being issued small flags to wave respectfully and with dignity when our schools received their various awards at the Magnet Schools of America ceremony in Baltimore, Maryland, I headed over to the Benedictine Monastery on Country Club, parked my car under the solar panels and jiggled the kinda tricky backdoor, to enter an entirely different sort of world.

I looped my dangling name tag and walked down the hall past where big plates of rice and beans and oatmeal muffins were being handed out, around the corner where a nice person was reviewing the rather convoluted legal ramifications of requesting asylum to a group of very-carefully listening ears, to the transportation room. Now, actually I haven’t been officially trained for this duty, although I sure made a lot of phone calls that first crazy week at St. Pius when Diego was making up things as we went along in lovely chaos, but 87 folks had been admitted today, and they needed someone to call each of their contacts spread all across America and walk them through the details of purchasing Greyhound bus tickets for each family member, and getting back to us with the confirmation number. And it’s pretty hard talking on a phone in Spanish reading lots and lots of numbers back in forth with about forty or fifty pretty anxious folks crowded around and about half of them under the age of eight, so in my free time I organized a coloring crew at my table.

And Maria looked especially worn out. And man, her twelve-year-old daughter looked pregnant to me, but I wasn’t doing intake, and they had already met with the medical team, eaten dinner, and been issued clean sheets and towels, so I focused on the phone call to her nephew in Riverside. And the first two numbers didn’t work, but she pulled out a very tattered scrap of paper with yet a third number and I finally got through. And he sounded cheerful and business-like, and once I gave him all of the assorted phone numbers, and please buy tickets that leave between 9 AM and 9 PM because it’s a lot easier to find rides to the bus station then, I passed the phone over to Maria.

Tears welled up in those weary eyes. Maria held the phone, and after whispering, “Thank you,” she said to herself, to her daughter, to her nephew, to me, and to her heavenly Father, “I am in a safe place.” Again and again she repeated, “I am in a safe place.” At last. “God has proven faithful and not abandoned me and my daughter. At last we are safe. We have passed through things so horrible the mind cannot understand, but God is faithful and has brought us to a safe place at last.”

Dear LORD God, may I be a safe place to each of your children today, a place of Your love, Your comfort and Your mercy.